HFT

According to most analysts and pundits, reasons for the latest market sell-off include the following: China, low commodity prices, energy default rates, or an old-fashioned technical correction.
However, one issue that's flying surprisingly under the radar is high-frequency trading....

A half hour before the market closed on Tuesday, shares of The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE: HD) experienced a flash crash.
Benzinga spoke with Dennis Dick, co-host of the #Premarket Prep show, about the issue.
A recap of the events are below:
1. Home Depot was trading at $96.24 as of 3:55 PM,...

“Flash Boys” author Michael Lewis is one of Felix Salmon’s favorite writers.
“He is the best writer of nonfiction financial journalism in the world,” he said. “There’s really no doubt about that.”
Salmon is a senior editor at Fusion, former...

Ezra Rapoport doesn’t sleep much during the week.
He's a high-frequency trader in futures markets, which are only closed for 45 minutes every day. His systems are running 23 hours a day, and Rapoport himself is up and running for most of that time as well.
Rapoport is the head of...

As of Tuesday afternoon, the stock market was struggling with "The Five 'E's."
Traders were fretting about the potential impact of Ebola, Europe's sinking economy, the big dive in energy, the status of various monetary easing efforts by central bankers around the...

This past Tuesday night, news hit that BATS Global Markets was in the process of settling with the Securitues and Exchange Comission on the claim that Direct Edge provided unfair perks to certain high frequency traders (HFT), a development that might set a pivotal precedent in the market...

Despite the number of people remaining bearish, Dennis Gartman says it's still a bull market out there.
Gartman has been writing his daily financial trading commentary, “The Gartman Letter,” every day for the past thirty years -- with the single exception of his parent's 50th wedding anniversary....

Doug Kass, President of Seabreeze Partners Management, sees a market that's not only rich in risk, but also rigged. He discussed these views and more while appearing on Benzinga's #PreMarket Prep in April.
“With [high-frequency trading] accounting for nearly 70 percent of total trading activity...

“Downtown” Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, frequent CNBC contributor and author of the widely popular financial blog, 'The Reformed Broker,' was a guest on Benzinga's #PreMarket Prep show this week to talk about his blog, new book and high frequency trading...

Joel Elconin and Dennis Dick discussed on Wednesday's Benzinga's #PreMarket Prep the broad swath of mini-flash crashes that hit before Tuesday's close.
After the 3:40 p.m. time period, roughly 20 different stocks were hit with mini-flash crashes. The movements ranged from seven to...

Last week, 11 financial and Wall Street firms, including the Security Traders Association and NYSE-Euronext issued statements on future practices for fair markets. Perhaps not surprisingly, the subject of high frequency trading came up as a prominent issue affecting today's trading exchanges....

Add another victim to the long list of high frequency trading (HFT) raids.
Earlier in today's session, shares of QUALCOMM (NASDAQ: QCOM) got crushed, as computer programs loaded up the sell side and took out a huge number of bids, wreaking havoc on the stock in the process.
At 9:54am, shares...

The S&P 500 has gained 101% from the low set back in March of 2009 (666.79). Even with yesterday's market plunge, the S&P is only 15% lower than its all time high of 1,576.09, which was set back in October of 2007. The question is why.
Has the economy really improved that much since the...